Baptists in Iceland
| Basic data | |
|---|---|
| Leading clergy: | Viktoría Karlsdóttir and Patrekur Vilhjálmsson |
| Membership: | No |
| Municipalities: | 1 |
| Parishioners: | 36 |
| Share of the total population: |
approx. 0.0114% |
| Official Website: | [1] |
Baptists in Iceland have only been around since the middle of the 20th century. They have been a state-recognized religious society since 1994. Your church building is located on the southern peninsula of Iceland in Njarðvík, a town with around 25,000 inhabitants.
history
In the 1950s, some Baptist missionaries tried to plant a church in Iceland. From this work the only official Baptist church in Iceland so far emerged, the First Baptist Church (Icelandic: Fyrsta Baptista Kirkjan ). In 1999 the pastors Patrick and Vicky Weimer from the Baptist Missionary Family organization founded another congregation, the Baptistakirkjan á Suðurnesjum , in which services were held exclusively in Icelandic. However, this congregation merged with the Fyrsta Baptista Kirkjan in 2006 . The Weimers, who now have Icelandic citizenship and have changed their names to Patrekur Vilhjámsson and Viktoría Karlsdóttir in accordance with Icelandic tradition , have been providing pastoral service since 2006. In addition, a missionary from the Bible Baptist fellowship works in the Icelandic Baptist Church. Johnny G. Wright was the parish pastor from 1989 until the congregation merger.
Under the name Garðabæ Baptista Kirkjan, there is a Baptist church planting initiative in the Reykjavík region, where around 200,000 people live. It has around 20 worshipers.
Teaching, practice, statistics
The Fyrsta Baptista Kirkjan describes herself as true to the Bible. She is autonomous. There are friendly contacts with various American Baptist churches.
Services are held in English and Icelandic. An average of 80–120 people attend the service. 36 community members are officially registered, a third of whom are under 15 years of age. The proportion of Baptists per 100,000 population is 11.4. (For comparison: Austria 16.1; Switzerland 22.7; Germany 91.9)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Statistics on religions in Iceland
